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The numbers are out…and they’re up. The limits for making contributions to retirement accounts in 2019. Let’s take a look and break it down.

Got a 401k or 403b at work? Check this out. The IRS calls them “elective deferrals”. I’ll call them “the amount you can stick in your account”…right out of your paycheck. In 2019, the maximum contribution amount rises $500 bucks to $19,000.

The catch up contribution for folks 50 and older holds steady at $6,000.

Hey everybody, O’Grady here. The retirement plan contribution limits are out for 2019, but in this video we’re going to recap your 2018 limits…because you might not have hit the limit yet…and you’ve got a little margin and you may be able to make an adjustment and sock away a little more.

The 2018 401k contribution maxes out at $18,500. If your age 50 and older, you’re allowed an additional $6,000 catch-up contribution.

We’re closing in fast on the new year, so you’ve only a paycheck or two to go. But you could adjust your contribution amount. Check your paystub and review your year to date contribution amount to see where you stand.

Happy Thanksgiving…unless, of course you’re watching this after Thanksgiving. Then Black Friday condolences to you. Or is it Small Business Saturday already. Can we at least give it a rest on Sunday before Cyber Monday.

Then it’s Tech & Taco Tuesday…Buy one, get one tacos at all taco establishments as long as you’re connected to your tech via AirPods.

Alec Baldwin gets arrested and the hunt for Red October is finally over.

When you open your October statement…the month end value may be…all right…will be less than it was at the beginning of the month. Notice I didn’t say you lost money last month. You didn’t…unless of course you sold shares when they were down in value. Yeah…then you did lock in the loss.

The S&P 500 suffered its worst loss in seven years…off nearly 7%. The Dow was down a touch past 5%, the worst month since January of 2016. If you’re like me, you’ve already forgotten that. Just like we’ll forget this October as well.

Hey everybody, O’Grady here. Just some quick thoughts on this week’s market volatility.

Despite our best efforts to ignore mainstream financial media and their constant barrage of doom and gloom headlines…all in hopes of getting you to take action and then keep watching for the next action you should be taking…well, this week’s market was hard to ignore.

Hey everybody, O’Grady here. Here’s a question I get a lot. What’s a Roth IRA paying right now? Or, something like, “I hear Roth IRAs aren’t very good…they’re not paying much right now.” Let’s take a look and break it down.

Well, the Roth IRA is not an investment, it’s an account type. Think…Individual, Joint, IRA, 401k, 403b, 529…and on and on. Those are all account types. And the account type determines how an investment is treated for tax purposes, not how much it earns or returns. Let’s take a look and break it down.

We’ve got this all backwards. Retirement. Saving for retirement. Busting your butt for 40-years so one day you’ll have enough money to finally relax and check out. Finally do what you want, when you want, and just enjoy with nary a care for anyone else.

God didn’t design healthy people to only work for some arbitrary number of years and then shut down. How many stories have we heard, how many people do we know or friends know of, that retire and within months, sometimes weeks, are going out of their minds with boredom, wishing they could get their job back.

You been following the kerfuffle over IHOP changing its name to IHOB. Yeah…I thought it was breakfast too. But it’s burgers. Like millions of others, I didn’t know they served burgers…so I guess the marketing plan is working.

I kind of like Wendy’s retort on Twitter. “Not really afraid of the burgers from a place that decided pancakes were too hard.”

It’s possible you were too caught up in the IHOP vs IHOB debate to notice the Fed raised interest rates this week. The central bank upped the federal funds target rate a quarter point to 1.75% - 2.00% range. That’s the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans.

For my money, Fed Head Jerome Powell speaks in everyday language, a departure from previous fed-speak that required a panel of economists and TV pundits to parse.